TUESDAY • NOVEMBER 26, 2013
THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SINCE 1892
CHICAGOMAROON.COM
ISSUE 16 • VOLUME 125
Fourth-year awarded Rhodes Scholarship Sara Cao Maroon Contributor Fourth-year Samuel Greene has been named a Rhodes Scholar, the University’s first in three years. Greene is the 49th student from UChicago to win the prestigious award, and will continue his studies in physical and theoretical chemistry at the University of Oxford next fall. He chose to apply for the scholarship so he could study climate change in a non-American context. He spent this past September in Alaska studying the dynamics of how lake freezing changes the rate of methane emissions. Greene said he became interested in energy and the environment as a result of growing up in Hawaii, where he saw how the limited
resources available on a small island contributed to population stress. “I knew I wanted to pursue a career addressing climate change and how it affects the whole world, including Hawaii,” he said. The Rhodes Scholarship, which includes tuition, expenses, and a stipend, is awarded to 32 American undergraduates annually to facilitate their postgraduate studies at Oxford. The application process for the scholarship was very demanding, Greene said. Much of the difficulty arose from “trying to figure out what I wanted to say about myself, and how I wanted to say it. Then I had to manage to stick all these ideas together in a story and connect that story to climate change.”
Second in command visits the Second City Vice President Joe Biden speaks to students during an off-the-record, closed to the press event hosted by the Institute of Politics on Monday afternoon, part of a daylong trip to Chicago.
RHODES continued on page 2
COURTESY OF UCHICAGO INSTITUTE OF POLITICS
Legal hurdles delay Yusho Hamid Bendaas News Staff While Matthias Merges’s newest restaurant, A10, opened earlier this month, the opening of his other Hyde Park project Yusho, a second iteration of his popular restaurant in Logan Square, has been stalled by zoning technicalities and an ongoing lawsuit. The primary obstacle to Yusho’s opening is its location
in a “dry” precinct, which is bounded by East 53rd Street to the north, South Kimbark Avenue to the west, East 55th Street to the south, and South Dorchester Avenue to the east. The University recently circulated a petition to overturn an existing alcohol ban in the area. Residents around the designated Yusho site—the former Third World Café at East 53rd Street and South Kimbark Avenue—filed
a lawsuit challenging the petition, claiming that the University had used bullying and manipulative tactics to collect signatures. On November 8, a Cook County Circuit judge chose to proceed with the lawsuit, which means Yusho is unlikely to open this year as was originally planned. In addition to circulating the petition, the University— which owns the land—applied YUSHO continued on page 2
Univ. pushing for Obama library Ankit Jain News Editor The University for the first time has openly expressed interest in the Obama presidential library as the University of Illinois at Chicago and Chicago State University launch public campaigns to try to bring the library to their respective campuses. “The University of Chicago was fortunate to have President Obama on its Law School faculty for 12 years, and to benefit from
Mrs. Obama’s leadership in several senior administrative roles,” Susan Sher, senior adviser to University President Robert Zimmer, said in an e-mailed statement. “The City of Chicago and the South Side in particular could benefit greatly from the cultural opportunities and economic development that a presidential library could bring.” Sher, who was Michelle Obama’s chief of staff from 2009 to 2011, is leading efforts to bring the library to campus, according to law professor Geoffrey Stone,
head of the committee exploring the logistics of a potential library. Institute of Politics (IOP) Director and Obama Senior Advisor David Axelrod (A.B. ’76) also hopes the library will be at the University. “Obviously, the University of Chicago is a formative place for [Obama]. And we look forward, if he does bring his library here, to synergy between the library and the IOP, because there’s a lot we can do together,” Axelrod said in an interview last year.
Early action applications set another record, continue yearly rise Sarah Manhardt Maroon Contributor
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More students than ever applied for early action to the College this year, marking the fifth consecutive year of an increase in these applications. This year, 11,143 students applied through the College’s non-binding early action program, an 8-percent rise from last year’s 10,316 applicants. In a press release, the University reports an increase of 6.7 percent, due to an additional 130 early applicants from last year not accounted for in the initial official numbers that were released. The College accepted 13.4
percent of applicants from the first round of admissions last year, according to The New York Times blog “The Choice.” The number of early action applications has risen 89.4 percent since 2009, when James Nondorf became the dean of college admissions and financial aid and when the College began using the Common Application. The College has seen, on average, a 20-percent increase in the number of early applicants every year since 2010. According to University spokesperson Jeremy Manier, what this year’s comparatively low rate of increase signifies is unclear
for now. “I think the expectation is that at some point you’ll see the number reach the natural level, and it’s difficult to tell whether we’re there yet,” Manier said. Last year, early applications comprised about a third of the total pool of 30,396 applications. The overall acceptance rate was 8.8 percent. According to a University press release, this year’s early applicant pool is also highly diverse. Students applied from every state and 79 countries, also a record high for the College. Domestically, the most EA continued on page 2
IN VIEWPOINTS
IN ARTS
IN SPORTS
What we’re thankful for » Page 3
Hunger Games’ latest is better than stuffing » Page 5
Women make history with fourthplace finish at NCAAs » Back Page
Pressing issues: My first gingerbread house » Page 5
First-years impress at Concordia University Open » Page 7
What it means to be “proIsrael” » Page 4